Plaque Honours 'Letter From Ulster' Director

Northern Ireland's most legendary film director and Belfast's first bohemian, Brian Desmond Hurst, is being honoured with a blue plaque in Queen's Film Theatre today.

As part of the Belfast Film Festival both The Directors Guild of Great Britain and the Ulster History Circle will be recalling the east Belfast-born film maker at QFT at 7.15pm on Wednesday.

Special screenings of Theirs is the Glory and the US servicemen WWII mini 'epic' A Letter from Ulster will take place prior to the plaque unveiling with the first film starting at 5.15pm.

A Letter From Ulster (1943) saw Hurst and lifelong friends Terence Young (scriptwriter) and his fellow Ulsterman and Assistant Director William (Bill) MacQuitty creating a film promoting a sense of community between the people of Northern Ireland and over one hundred thousand troops from the USA based in Northern Ireland at the time.

Tensions between the US troops and the local population were rising and there was a need to defuse the situation.

Brian lived a bohemian and sometimes controversial life and mixed socially with Noel Coward, WB Yeats, Henry de Vere Talbot Clifton and Laurence Olivier - in sharp contrast to his humble beginnings.

Introducing his first movie will be Hurst's biographer, Allan Esler Smith. He'll be in speaking about Theirs is the Glory (1946) where Hurst took 200 members of the 1st Airborne back to Arnhem to direct and 'remake' their role in the Battle of Arnhem.

Brian said: "The film is my favourite because of the wonderful experience of working with soldiers, and because it is a true documentary reconstruction of the event. I say without modesty it is one of the best war films ever made."

The Ulster History Circle are also honouring Brian's co-film maker William MacQuitty with a blue plaque to be unveiled in Bangor.

(DW/BMcC)